Developmental Psychology
2002, Vol. 38, No. 3, 407– 417
Copyright 2002 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
0012-1649/02/$5.00 DOI: 10.1037//0012-1649.38.3.407
The Spanish Ser/Estar Distinction in Bilingual Children’s Reasoning About
Human Psychological Characteristics
Gail D. Heyman
Gil Diesendruck
University of California, San Diego
Bar-Ilan University
Children’s reasoning about the stability of human psychological characteristics was investigated in
relation to the obligatory distinction between the Spanish verb forms ser and estar (which convey
different information about the stability of characteristics) and the corresponding English form to be.
Participants (85 bilingual children, ages 6 to 10 years) were interviewed to determine (a) whether the
ser/estar distinction is relevant to reasoning about the stability of human characteristics and (b) whether
beliefs about the stability of psychological characteristics relate to differences in the use of ser and estar
to describe and explain social events. Children treated ser and to be as more likely than estar to convey
the stability of psychological characteristics. Children who tended to endorse stable views of psychological characteristics were especially likely to use the ser form in their descriptions and explanations.
powers in that they determine superficial features. Thus, if two
entities are believed to share the same essence, one might expect
them also to share many superficial features, such as appearance
and behavior. There is evidence that young children often rely on
essentialist reasoning in the biological domain (see Gelman,
Coley, & Gottfried, 1994, and Gelman & Diesendruck, 1999, for
reviews). It has also been argued that children hold essentialist
beliefs about social categories such as gender (Taylor, 1996) and
race (Hirschfeld, 1995).
Why might children use essentialist reasoning when thinking
about psychological characteristics? One possibility is that children have a specific competence for reasoning about the social
world that includes essentialist beliefs (Hirschfeld, 1996). A second possibility is that children extend essentialist beliefs about
biological categories to social and psychological categories (Atran,
1990). A third possibility is that essentialist thinking is not limited
to a specific domain and is promoted by particular cultural inputs
(Sperber, 1996). According to each of these perspectives, especially that of Sperber, the language that is used to refer to the social
world can play a key role in the development of children’s beliefs
about people. Drawing from these accounts of essentialist social
reasoning, the present research examines the relation between
language and children’s beliefs about the stability of psychological
characteristics.1
The present article addresses the possibility that children’s inferences about the stability of psychological characteristics are
influenced by the way members of their community talk about
people (Gelman & Heyman, 1999; Rothbart & Taylor, 1992;
Semin & Fiedler, 1988; Wylie, 1990). For instance, it is possible
that the use of certain linguistic forms to describe people’s behavior (e.g., nouns and adjectives vs. verbal predicates) may lead
One challenge children face in learning about the social world is
determining which psychological characteristics are relatively stable and fundamental and which are not. This determination has
important implications for social interaction and achievement motivation (Camhy & Ruble, 1994; Dweck, 1999; Giles & Heyman,
2001; Heyman, Dweck, & Cain, 1992; Rholes, Jones, & Wade,
1988). For instance, children who view traits as stable over time
tend to make negative global evaluations based on limited evidence and to deemphasize processes that might lead to different
future outcomes or to the development of more favorable traits
(Heyman & Dweck, 1998).
An understanding of children’s reasoning about the stability of
psychological characteristics can also shed light on their naive
theories of psychology (Bales & Sera, 1995; Heyman, 2001;
Heyman & Gelman, 2000a, 2000c; Maas, Marecek, & Travers,
1978). One critical issue in this regard concerns the source of
children’s beliefs about the stability of psychological characteristics. A number of researchers have suggested that these beliefs
may be part of a broader understanding of people that is grounded
in essentialist reasoning (Gelman, 1992; Hirschfeld, 1996). Essentialist reasoning is defined as a tendency to believe that things
have natures or underlying essences that make them what they are
(see Medin, 1989). Essences are believed to have intrinsic causal
Gail D. Heyman, Department of Psychology, University of California,
San Diego; Gil Diesendruck, Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.
This research was supported by National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development Grant HD38529. We thank Eva Bonilla and Leticia
Gonzalez for their work in preparing the stimuli, for data collection, and for
coding. We thank Brian Compton for assistance with computer programming and for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. We also
thank Jessica Giles for helpful comments.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Gail D.
Heyman, Department of Psychology, University of California, San
Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, California 92093-0109. E-mail:
[email protected]
1
The present research does not test an essentialist account of reasoning
about psychological characteristics. Instead, it focuses on the role of
language in children’s reasoning about psychological characteristics. This
is an important issue to address regardless of whether children reason about
psychological characteristics in an essentialist way.
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HEYMAN AND DIESENDRUCK
children to make different inferences about the stability of the
behavior. The present research also investigates the complementary possibility that the way children use language is influenced by
their beliefs about the stability of psychological traits.
To investigate these possibilities, the present study takes advantage of a linguistic distinction that is present in Spanish but not in
English: the distinction between the verb forms ser and estar,
which correspond to the English form to be. Estar is generally used
with temporary properties, both psychological and nonpsychological, and ser is used with permanent properties2 (see Sera, Bales, &
del Castillo Pintado, 1997, and Silva-Corvalán, 1986, for further
discussion). For example, one might convey that Carlos has a
stable attribute of distractibility by saying “Carlos es distraido”
(i.e., inflecting the verb ser) and that Carlos is exhibiting distractibility at the moment by saying “Carlos está distraido” (i.e., inflecting the verb estar). It seems plausible that children might
make use of the ser/estar distinction to make inferences about the
nature of the characteristic in question. Specifically, children who
hear the first description of Carlos might be more likely to infer
that Carlos will be distractible in the future and in different
contexts than might children who hear the second description.
Consistent with this possibility is evidence that even preschoolage children use ser and estar contrastively (Sera, 1992, Study 1).
For example, they consistently use the ser form with certain
adjectives and the estar form with others. Also consistent with this
possibility is evidence that adults treat adjectives that convey
information about the shape (e.g., redondo, which means round),
size (e.g., grande, which means big), color (e.g., amarillo, which
means yellow), and texture (e.g., peludo, which means furry) of
objects as more fundamental in defining a category when the ser
form is used than when the estar form is used (Sera, 1992, Study
2). There is also evidence that the ser/estar distinction has implications for children’s reasoning on appearance–reality tasks. On
these tasks, children are presented with stimuli that pose a conflict
between the way something appears and what it really is (Flavell,
1986). In a series of studies, Sera et al. (1997) presented
appearance–reality tasks to 3–5-year-old Spanish speakers, 3–5year-old English speakers, and 3–7-year-old bilingual Spanish and
English speakers. In the Spanish version of the task, the estar form
was used for the appearance questions, and the ser form was used
for the reality questions. Children performed equally well in Spanish and English when identifying apparent properties, but children
performed better in Spanish when identifying real properties.
These results suggest that the ser form conveys information about
what something really is and constitutes a source of information
that has no correlate in English.
Although children’s use of the ser/estar distinction in their
reasoning about the stability of human characteristics has not been
addressed in prior research, there is evidence that children as
young as 5 years of age are sensitive to some linguistic cues when
making these types of inferences. Gelman and Heyman (1999)
tested the effects of novel nominalized phrases on children’s
inferences about people. Five- and 7-year-olds heard a description
of a person (e.g., “Rose is eight years old. Rose eats a lot of
carrots.”) followed by one of two possible sentences. Half of the
children heard a noun label for each character (e.g., “She is a
carrot-eater.”), and half heard a verbal predicate (e.g., “She eats
carrots whenever she can.”). Participants were asked to make a
series of inferences about whether the behavior in question was
likely to be stable over time and across contexts. For example, they
were asked about future behavior (“Will Rose eat a lot of carrots
when she is grown up?”) and behavior with no family support
(“Would Rose eat a lot of carrots if she grew up in a family where
no one liked carrots?”). Children judged characteristics to be more
stable when they were referred to by a noun than when they were
referred to by a verbal predicate.
In the present study we sought to determine whether
elementary-school-age bilingual Spanish and English speakers
would take advantage of the ser/estar linguistic distinction when
making inferences about the extent to which psychological characteristics are stable and fundamental. In particular, we asked
whether inferences about the stability of psychological characteristics would differ when descriptions were provided that used the
ser and the estar forms and how these inferences would compare
with those based on the English form to be. There are several
possible answers to these questions.
One possibility is that children do not rely on the ser/estar
distinction when reasoning about the stability of psychological
characteristics. Although it is clear that children of this age are
capable of making a distinction between these forms in some
contexts (Sera, 1992; Sera et al., 1997), it is not necessarily the
case that they would make use of it when reasoning about psychological characteristics. This could be because children do not
think the ser/estar distinction is relevant to this domain or because
they have definite beliefs about the stability of psychological
characteristics that lead them to override the language information.
If children do not make use of the ser/estar distinction, then
inferences about stability should not differ on the basis of the verb
form that is used to describe the psychological characteristics in
question.
A second possibility is that linguistic effects are limited to
inferences in which a particular characteristic is described with the
use of a particular verb form. For example, children who hear that
“Maria es penosa” may be more likely to assume that Maria will
persist in being penosa (shy) than if they hear “Maria está penosa,”
but they may not necessarily infer that Maria’s other psychological
characteristics, or psychological characteristics in general, are stable. This possibility leads to the prediction that one will see only
local effects of the verb form on reasoning (i.e., effects of ser vs.
estar should be limited to reasoning about characteristics for which
the ser/estar manipulation is used).
Finally, a third possibility is that the ser/estar distinction leads
to broad differences in inferences about stability that apply beyond
the contexts in which the ser and estar forms are used. For
example, it is possible that after hearing several characteristics
described with the estar form, children assume that these characteristics do not tend to be stable and that other psychological
characteristics do not tend to be stable either. If this is the case, the
ser/estar distinction will serve to teach children about the stability
of psychological characteristics more generally.
2
These forms have certain syntactic differences. For instance, forms of
estar are nearly always used as auxiliaries, and forms of ser are used with
nominals, but both forms can be used with adjectives (see Sera, 1992). In
the experimental tasks used in the current study, the forms appeared
preceding adjectives and thus appeared in identical syntactic frames.
SER/ESTAR INFERENCES
These general possibilities notwithstanding, it is plausible that
the effects of linguistic input on children’s reasoning may vary
across development. These variations may result from developmental changes in children’s beliefs about traits (see Rholes,
Newman, & Ruble, 1990) or in their sensitivity to linguistic cues
(Slobin, 1985).
Regarding changes in children’s beliefs about psychological
characteristics, Hirschfeld (1996) would seem to predict an initial
default essentialism that would remain relatively stable over development or that might be reduced by cultural inputs. Consistent
with this possibility is evidence found by Bales and Sera (1995)
that preschool children tend to show strong essentialist assumptions about some human characteristics that tend to decrease over
time. On the other hand, Atran’s (1990) and Sperber’s (1996)
views would seem to imply that with time, and exposure to certain
cultural and linguistic inputs, children learn to apply essentialist
beliefs to psychological characteristics. In other words, essentialism in the social domain might grow stronger with development.
It is likely that with increasing exposure to linguistic distinctions, children become better at recognizing their conceptual implications. Consistent with this possibility is some evidence that
4-year-olds are more sensitive than 3-year-olds to linguistic distinctions present in their language that relate to the truth value of
beliefs (Shatz, Martinez, Diesendruck, & Akar, 2001).
In the present study we took an exploratory look at these
developmental issues by investigating possible changes in the
effect of ser, estar, and to be in 6 –10-year-olds’ reasoning about
psychological characteristics. Specifically, we hoped to shed some
light on these questions by looking at developmental changes in
children’s reliance on ser, estar, and to be in drawing inferences
about the stability of psychological characteristics and by analyzing children’s biases to use ser versus estar to explain human
behavior.
This consideration of whether language affects thought implies
a corresponding question: How might thought affect language
production in this context? Specifically, do children’s beliefs about
the stability of human characteristics influence the extent to which
they use the ser and estar forms to describe the characteristics of
others? Previous research has suggested that children who endorse
the belief that characteristics are stable also tend to endorse the
belief that there is a direct mapping between information (such as
behaviors and outcomes) and more general traits and consequently
tend to draw more general inferences about people on the basis of
limited information (Camhy & Ruble, 1994; Dweck, 1999; Giles
& Heyman, 2001; Heyman & Dweck, 1998; Heyman et al., 1992;
Rholes et al., 1988). For example, Heyman and Dweck (1998)
found that 7- and 8-year-olds who endorsed beliefs in the stability
of traits showed a tendency to make global trait judgments of
others on the basis of even minor transgressions. These individuals
were also more likely to rapidly equate academic difficulty with a
lack of ability and to deemphasize the role of task-relevant processes such as effort and strategy generation in academic
achievement.
Moreover, there is evidence that in a nonsocial domain (reasoning about animals), preschoolers from diverse cultures use essentialist reasoning when making linguistic decisions (Diesendruck,
2001; Diesendruck, Gelman, & Lebowitz, 1998). Preschoolers
were more likely to infer that two entities had the same name when
the entities were two animals with similar internal (i.e., essential)
409
properties then when the entities were two animals with similar
superficial properties or two artifacts with similar internal, superficial, or functional properties. On the basis of these findings, one
might expect that Spanish-speaking children who tend to endorse
a belief in stable characteristics would be especially likely to use
the ser form to explain events that depict specific behaviors or
outcomes.
A key question for the present study is how children’s inferences about psychological characteristics that are described with
the Spanish ser and estar forms will compare to their inferences
about the same characteristics described with the English to be
form. In a sense, the latter serves as a conceptual baseline representing children’s beliefs about psychological characteristics without the effect of language. All participants were bilingual speakers
of Spanish and English and were randomly assigned to one of three
conditions: ser, estar, and to be. This random assignment of
participants from a single bilingual population, rather than separate
monolingual populations, helps to ensure that any group differences that might be seen can be attributed to linguistic rather than
cultural differences (see Sera et al., 1997). This is particularly
important in the study of beliefs about psychological characteristics in light of arguments that cultures differ dramatically in their
tendency to emphasize the importance of stable psychological
characteristics (Lillard, 1998; Lutz, 1985; Markus & Kitayama,
1991; Miller, 1984). However, it should be noted that language
effects with regard to the ser/estar distinction are likely to be
weaker for bilingual Spanish and English speakers than for monolingual Spanish speakers. This difference may be due to interference from the English form to be on the use and extension of its
Spanish equivalents (see Silva-Corvalán, 1986).
Participants in the present study were between the ages of 6
and 10 years, ages at which they may be sensitive to linguistic cues
when reasoning about psychological characteristics (e.g., Gelman
& Heyman, 1999) and at which beliefs about the stability of
psychological characteristics have motivational implications (e.g.,
Heyman & Dweck, 1998). Although some of these effects have
also been seen among younger children, no children younger than
age 6 were included because it was not clear that they would have
the necessary linguistic sophistication to understand and respond
to many of the measures.
In short, in the present study we had two complementary goals.
The first goal was to examine children’s use of the Spanish
ser/estar distinction and the English to be form when making
inferences about whether psychological characteristics are likely to
remain stable over time and across contexts. The second goal was
to examine whether individual differences in beliefs about the
stability of psychological characteristics would be associated with
differences in the tendency to use the ser and estar forms when
describing people and explaining social events. We hoped that by
looking at a wide age range, we would be able to explore some
developmental issues related to these questions.
Method
Participants
Eighty-five bilingual elementary-school children (45 girls and 40 boys;
age range ⫽ 6 years 4 months to 10 years 1 month, mean age ⫽ 8 years 0
months) participated in individual interviews. All participants were His-
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panic and attended public schools in Calexico, California, a small city on
the border between the United States and Mexico. Only children who were
able to converse reasonably well in both English and Spanish, as judged by
their teachers, were selected for participation. Parents were also asked to
rate their child’s proficiency in English and Spanish on a scale from 1
(doesn’t speak at all / no hablá nada) to 5 (speaks very well, as a mother
tongue / hablá muy bien como lengua materna). Ratings were completed
for 84.7% of participating children. The mean proficiency ratings for
Spanish (M ⫽ 4.74, SD ⫽ 0.60) were significantly higher than those for
English (M ⫽ 3.12, SD ⫽ 1.34), F(1, 69) ⫽ 84.96, p ⬍ .01. This difference
reflects the fact that participants in the study primarily spoke Spanish in the
home and tended to speak Spanish or a mixture of Spanish and English
with other children outside of class while attending school. Participants
were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: ser (n ⫽ 27, mean age
⫽ 8 years 1 month), estar (n ⫽ 29, mean age ⫽ 7 years 11 months), and
to be (n ⫽ 29, mean age ⫽ 7 years 11 months).
Measures
Overview. Participants took part in individual interviews that involved
four tasks in one of two possible orders. The tasks are described below in
one of the orders (Order 1) in which they were presented. (In Order 2, the
tasks were presented in the reverse order). The inference task served
primarily to address the effect of the ser/estar distinction on children’s
inferences. The memory task was designed to examine whether children
systematically preferred one verb form to the other. The story generation
task was included to evaluate children’s spontaneous use of ser and estar.
Finally, the belief task was designed to measure children’s beliefs about the
stability of behaviors associated with psychological characteristics and to
allow for subsequent analysis of the relation between stability beliefs and
children’s spontaneous use of ser and estar.
The ser and estar conditions differed only in the verb form that was used
with a target adjective within the inference task and the memory task, as
described below. The other two tasks were identical across the ser and
estar conditions. The to be condition consisted of the question sets translated into English with the exception of the memory task, which is
discussed below.
The target characteristics were selected according to the requirement that
they be appropriate when used with both the ser and the estar forms as
judged by two bilingual native speakers of Spanish who also served as
experimenters. Prior to data collection, the procedure was pilot tested with
a separate sample of 42 bilingual elementary-school children. A summary
of the four tasks and their scoring is presented in Figure 1.
Inference task. The inference task was designed to assess the effect of
the ser/estar distinction on children’s inferences about the stability of
psychological characteristics. The task consisted of three question sets that
were presented in random order. Each question set began with a description
of an 8-year-old child and included a behavior or outcome and a corresponding psychological characteristic. For example, in one question set, the
description for the to be condition was “I know an 8-year-old girl named
Maria. Maria sits by herself at the party. Maria is shy.” For the ser and
estar conditions, this description was “Conozco a una niña de ocho años
que se Ilama Maria. Maria se sienta sola en la fiesta. Maria [es/está]
penosa.” (The difference between the ser and estar conditions is indicated
by the brackets.)
After the description that began each question set, participants were
asked a series of three questions, in Spanish for the ser and estar conditions
and in English for the to be condition. First, participants were presented
with an explanation measure in which they were asked to explain the
character’s behavior (e.g., “Why do you think Maria sits by herself at the
party?”). In the Spanish conditions, the number of times children used ser
or estar in their explanations was recorded. These counts were summed
across the three question sets, resulting in ser and estar scores that had a
possible range from 0 to 3. Second, participants were asked two questions
that made up an inference measure. On the first question of this measure,
participants were asked about the stability of the behavior across situations
(e.g., “When Maria goes to other parties do you think that she sits by
herself?”). On the second question of this measure, participants were asked
about the long-term stability of the behavior (e.g., “Do you think that Maria
will spend time by herself at parties when she is 10 years old?”). The other
two question sets described a character who gets all the answers right on
her spelling test and is described as smart and a character who forgets his
notebooks at school and is described as distractible. For purposes of
analysis, responses to the two inferences within each of the three question
sets were summed to create an inference score that ranged from 0, indicating no responses of stability, to 6, indicating stability responses on all
questions.
Memory task. The memory task was designed to examine whether
children might systematically misremember the ser and estar forms. Also
of interest was which verb form children would use when translating
stories from English into Spanish.
The memory task consisted of three character descriptions presented in
random order. In the ser and estar conditions, the first sentence of each
story described a behavior (e.g., “Pablo visita a su abuela,” which means
“Pablo visits his grandmother”). A sentence that was presented second in
one of the stories and fourth in the other two described a permanent
characteristic with the ser form (e.g., “Pablo es alto,” which means “Pablo
is tall”). A sentence that appeared second in two of the stories and fourth
in the other used the estar form and contained a description that was clearly
limited to one context (e.g., “Pablo está colgando un cuadro en la pared,”
which means “Pablo is hanging a picture on the wall”).
The sentence representing the ser/estar manipulation appeared in the
third position within each story. This sentence described a target characteristic and used the ser form for the ser condition (e.g., “Pablo es limpio”)
and the estar form for the estar condition (e.g., “Pablo está limpio”). The
target characteristics were limpio (clean), amistosa (friendly), and feliz
(happy), each of which can be used plausibly with both ser and estar.
The memory task was different for the to be condition: Children were
presented with English versions of the stories and were asked to repeat
them back to the experimenter, translated into Spanish.
Responses were coded as to the number of times children used ser and
estar to describe the target characteristics. These were summed across the
three character descriptions, resulting in ser and estar scores that could
each range from 0 to 3.
Story generation task. The story generation task was designed to assess
children’s spontaneous use of the ser and estar forms. The task was
identical across the ser and estar conditions and was presented in English
in the to be condition. This task consisted of three items presented in
random order. On each item, participants were shown a line drawing of a
child exhibiting a behavior relevant to a particular characteristic, accompanied by a verbal description. For example, one picture depicted a boy
throwing rocks at dogs, and the description was “Mira a Mario tirandoles
piedras a los perros” (“Look at Mario throwing rocks at the dogs”).
Children were asked to tell a story about the child and to explain the
behavior. The other behaviors concerned a child who had trouble with her
schoolwork and a child who helped to keep the park clean. Of primary
interest was the extent to which children in the two Spanish conditions
would use the ser or estar forms in their descriptions. For this purpose, the
numbers of times children in the Spanish conditions used ser or estar in
their descriptions were recorded. These were summed across the three
stories, resulting in ser or estar scores that could range from 0 to 3.
Belief task. The belief task was designed to provide a language-neutral
assessment of children’s beliefs about the stability of behaviors associated
with psychological characteristics. The task was identical across the ser
and estar conditions and was presented in English in the to be condition.
In the belief task, children were given behavioral descriptions of characters
and were asked about the stability of the behaviors. The behavioral descriptions were consistent with the psychological characteristics antisocial,
SER/ESTAR INFERENCES
Figure 1. Overview of measures and scoring. For each of the four tasks, one of the three trait labels or
trait-relevant behaviors is summarized.
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HEYMAN AND DIESENDRUCK
412
silly, and thrill-seeking, but no psychological characteristics were mentioned overtly.
The belief task consisted of two questions about each of the three
psychological characteristics. All questions were presented in random
order. For each characteristic, one question concerned whether the behavior was likely to continue in the future (e.g., for the antisocial behavior in
the to be condition: “Imagine a second-grade girl who gets into a lot of
trouble at school. Some people think she will keep getting into a lot of
trouble even when she is two years older. Do you think this is right?”). A
“yes” response was considered to be an endorsement of the stability of the
behavior. The other question concerned whether the behavior was likely to
stop in the future (e.g., “Imagine you see a girl who takes another kid’s
lunch, steps on the sandwich, and then spills the drink. When I asked some
kids about this girl, they said she will stop acting like this when she gets
a little older. Do you think this is right that she will stop acting like this
when she gets a little older?”). For these questions, a “no” response was
considered to be an endorsement of the stability of the behavior. Responses
indicating stability were summed across the two questions for each of the
three characteristics to create a belief score that ranged from 0, indicating
no responses of stability, to 6, indicating stability responses on all
questions.
Results
Effects of the Ser/Estar Distinction on Inferences
A key question was whether describing psychological characteristics with the ser and the estar forms would lead to differences
in the extent to which children infer stability. To address this issue,
we compared results of the inference measure from the inference
task across conditions. A 3 (verb form: ser, estar, to be) ⫻ 2
(participant gender) ⫻ 2 (task order) analysis of variance
(ANOVA) conducted on the inference scores revealed a significant
effect of verb form, F(2, 73) ⫽ 5.89, p ⬍ .01. Post hoc Scheffé
tests revealed that children in the ser condition (M ⫽ 4.2,
SD ⫽ 1.2) were significantly more likely to make stability inferences than were children in the estar condition (M ⫽ 3.3,
SD ⫽ 0.9, p ⬍ .05). For example, after hearing that Maria sat by
herself at a party, participants who heard Maria described as shy
with the ser form (i.e., “Maria es penosa”) were more likely to
infer that she sits by herself when she goes to other parties and
would spend time by herself at parties 2 years in the future than
were participants who heard the same description with the estar
form (i.e., “Maria está penosa”).
The differences in children’s expectations of stability across the
ser and estar conditions raise the question of how these inferences
compare with those in the to be condition. Results of the inference
measure from the to be condition (M ⫽ 4.2, SD ⫽ 1.2) were
compared with those from the ser and estar conditions. Post hoc
Scheffé tests indicated that stability inferences in the to be condition did not differ significantly from those in the ser condition
( p ⬎ .05) but did differ significantly from those in the estar
condition ( p ⬍ .05).
Taken together, these results show that the linguistic distinction
between ser and estar did influence children’s inferences about the
stability of psychological characteristics. Moreover, the findings
indicate that for the purposes of inferring the stability of psychological characteristics, children treated the to be form as equivalent
to the ser form.
Having demonstrated that the linguistic manipulation affected
children’s reasoning about psychological characteristics, we turned
to examine the breadth of these effects. If the effects are relatively
broad, one would expect that for participants who received Order 1, exposure to the verb form manipulation on the inference and
memory tasks might affect responses to subsequent items in which
no condition manipulation was presented.3 To address this possibility, we tested the effect of Spanish verb form condition, for
children in the ser and estar conditions who received Order 1, on
the following measures: (a) ser and estar scores from the story
generation task and (b) belief scores from the beliefs task. Results
indicated no significant effects of condition ( p ⬎ .20). This
suggests that at least in the context of the present experimental
procedure, the effects of the ser/estar manipulation were local in
that they affected items in which the verb form was manipulated
but not subsequent items.
Effects of Beliefs on Use of the Ser/Estar Forms
Another question concerned whether individual differences in
children’s beliefs about the stability of behaviors associated with
psychological characteristics were related to children’s use of the
ser and estar forms to produce descriptions and explanations of
behaviors and outcomes. To examine this issue, for children in the
ser and estar conditions, we correlated scores on the belief task
(which measured expectations that behaviors associated with psychological characteristics would be stable over time) with the
frequency of ser and estar in children’s responses to (a) the
explanation measure of the inference task and (b) the story generation task. Although correlations between stability beliefs and
production of estar forms were not significant on these measures,
correlations between stability beliefs and production of ser forms
were. Specifically, the correlation between stability beliefs and the
use of the ser form on the explanation measure was .27, and the
correlation between stability beliefs and the use of the ser form on
the story generation task was .33 (n ⫽ 56, p ⬍ .05 for each
correlation). These results suggest that children who tend to perceive behaviors associated with psychological characteristics as
stable are more likely to use the ser form when describing people.
Given that half of the participants were presented with items in
Order 1, in which the ser/estar manipulation was implemented at
the beginning of the experimental session, could it be that these
correlational results were an artifact of the ser/estar manipulation?
This would be possible if the manipulation affected levels of
production of ser versus estar and also reported beliefs about the
stability of traits. For example, participants in the estar condition
who received Order 1 may have been implicitly taught that traits
are not stable and may consequently have responded with increased use of the estar form and a decrease in the tendency to
endorse a belief in stable traits. This possibility is highly unlikely
given that children in the ser condition did not differ from children
3
Note that responses by participants who received Order 2 are not
relevant here, because in this order, the verb form manipulation appeared
at the end of the interview and could not have affected responses to other
questions.
SER/ESTAR INFERENCES
in the estar condition in their responses to these measures.4 It
appears that the correlations are not merely an experimental artifact and instead reflect individual differences in response patterns.
Exploratory Analyses of the Development and Nature of
Social Essentialism
In addition to the primary questions of interest, a series of
analyses was conducted to explore the development and status of
children’s reasoning about the stability of psychological characteristics. These analyses focused on three issues: (a) children’s
general tendencies to use ser and estar, (b) age-related changes in
children’s reasoning, and (c) the effect of order of exposure to the
linguistic manipulation on children’s reasoning.
Use of ser versus estar. To assess whether children had a
preferential tendency to use ser or estar to describe and explain
behavior, we computed the overall number of times children in the
ser and estar conditions used ser on all measures (the story
generation task, the memory task, and the explanation measure of
the inference task, with a total range from 0 to 9) and subtracted
from it the overall number of times children used estar on these
measures (range from 0 to 9). If children had no preference toward
one of the verb forms, we would expect this score to approach
zero. Positive scores would indicate a preference for the ser form,
and negative scores would indicate a preference for the estar form.
The overall mean for this score was 0.95 (SD ⫽ 1.54), which was
significantly different from 0, t(55) ⫽ 4.59, p ⬍ .01. In other
words, children had a general preference for ser over estar when
describing and explaining behavior.
A more precise measure of this preference was available in
children’s responses to the memory task. That task gave a measure
of the extent to which children correctly remembered the verb
form used by the experimenter to describe the characters’ target
behavior. To test whether children had a preference for one of the
verb forms, we calculated the proportion of times in which children used ser, as opposed to estar, when mentioning the target
characteristic (i.e., proportion of ser ⫽ total ser / [ser ⫹ estar]). If
children in the ser condition remembered the stories correctly and
in an unbiased manner, their proportion of ser responses should
have been 1. If children in the estar condition remembered the
stories correctly and in an unbiased manner, their proportion of ser
responses should have been 0. Children in the to be condition, who
translated the stories into Spanish, might have been expected to use
the ser and estar forms equally often if they were unbiased (i.e.,
proportion of ser ⫽ .5).
Children’s responses were tested against these expected values.
In the ser condition, participants tended to correctly remember the
verb form; the proportion of responses involving ser was .98
(SD ⫽ .01), which was not significantly different from the expected value of 1 ( p ⬎ .3). However, in the estar condition,
participants showed a tendency to misremember the verb form as
ser; the proportion of ser responses was .64 (SD ⫽ .41), which was
significantly different from the expected value of 0, t(20) ⫽ 7.14,
p ⬍ .01. Participants in the to be condition showed no significant
difference in their tendency to use the ser and the estar forms,
although in general they were more likely to use ser; the proportion of ser responses was .61 (SD ⫽ .38), which was not significantly different from the expected value of .5 ( p ⬎ .2). Across
conditions, the proportion of ser responses was .74, which was
413
significantly different from chance (.5), t(60) ⫽ 5.02, p ⬍ .01.
These results again suggest that children appeared to have used the
ser form when describing psychological characteristics, which is
consistent with an essentialist bias.
The results for the memory task raise the question of why
participants did not show a statistically significant tendency to
translate the to be form as ser given that they treated these forms
in the same manner on the inference task. One reason is that
different attributes were used on the tasks, and children may have
had different beliefs about the stability of these attributes that
affected their reasoning. A second reason might be that on the
inference task, children were not asked to make translations, and it
is unlikely that they did so. When children make translations,
many factors come into play, including word accessibility. It is
possible that children generally think of the ser form as roughly
equivalent to the to be form when reasoning about people (as
suggested by the inference task) but that the estar form is more
accessible to them. Consistent with this possibility is evidence that
in at least some contexts, children tend to use the estar form more
than the ser form (see Sera, 1992, Study 1).
Age-related changes. Also of interest was whether there might
be age-related changes in children’s reasoning about the stability
of psychological characteristics. To examine this question, we
subjected the sample to a median split, creating a group of children
who were older than 7.90 years (M ⫽ 8.69 years, SD ⫽ 0.57) and
a group of children who were younger than 7.90 years (M ⫽ 7.26
years, SD ⫽ 0.51). Age-related changes were evaluated by examining whether these groups differed in their tendency to give
responses indicating trait stability on the beliefs task and in their
relative production of ser and estar on the memory and story
generation tasks. The results indicated no significant differences
between the age groups on any of the tasks ( p ⬎ .5). In other
words, there were no developmental changes in children’s essentialist tendencies on these measures.
To examine whether there may have been developmental
changes in children’s tendency to be affected by the ser/estar
manipulation, we compared responses of younger and older children to the inference measure of the inference task. These comparisons are presented in Table 1.
Overall, there was a significant effect of condition, with children
from both age groups treating the to be form as more similar to the
ser form than to the estar form, F(2, 79) ⫽ 6.62, p ⬍ .01. It is
interesting that when we looked at each age group separately,
Scheffé tests on differences between conditions revealed that for
the younger group, the difference between the ser and estar conditions was not significant, and only the difference between the to
be and estar conditions was significant ( p ⬍ .05); for the older
group, only the difference between the ser and estar conditions
was marginally significant ( p ⬍ .06). These results provide sug4
It seems surprising that children’s level of ser versus estar production
on the explanation measure of the inference task was not significantly
affected by the verb form manipulation (for ser production, means were .67
and .41 in the ser and estar conditions, respectively; for estar production,
means were .19 and .31 in the ser and estar conditions, respectively). A
plausible explanation, which is consistent with the overall frequency of ser
and estar productions for this measure, is that children often avoided
repeating what they had heard verbatim. Instead, they offered alternative
explanations for the behavior that did not involve the ser/estar distinction.
HEYMAN AND DIESENDRUCK
414
Table 1
Inference Scores by Age and Condition
Age
Younger
M
SD
n
Older
M
SD
n
Ser
Estar
To be
Total
3.9
1.3
14
3.2
0.8
15
4.3
1.1
14
3.8
1.1
43
4.5
1.1
13
3.4
1.1
14
4.2
1.3
15
4.0
1.2
42
gestive evidence that older children may rely more on the ser/estar
distinction in making inferences about psychological characteristics than do younger children. However, further research is needed
to reach any firm conclusions and to determine what factors might
account for change over time. For example, results from a population comparable to that included in the present study could be
compared with results from a sample of monolingual Spanish
speakers to examine possible effects of English-language
schooling.
Order effects. To further explore whether children’s initial
biases were to infer that psychological characteristics are stable,
we compared inference scores when the inference task was presented first (Order 1) with inference scores when the inference task
was presented last (Order 2). (Order effects had been revealed by
the 3 [verb form: ser, estar, to be] ⫻ 2 [participant gender] ⫻ 2
[task order] ANOVA on the inference scores that was described
earlier.) This analysis revealed a significant effect of task order,
F(1, 73) ⫽ 4.37, p ⬍ .05. Participants gave more responses of
stability in Order 1, in which the inference task was presented at
the beginning of the interview (M ⫽ 4.2, SD ⫽ 1.3), than in
Order 2, in which it was presented at the end (M ⫽ 3.6, SD ⫽ 1.0).
There was no Verb Form ⫻ Task Order interaction. These results
are consistent with other research suggesting that after children
have reasoned about psychological characteristics in an experimental task, their reasoning about people becomes less essentialist
for a period of time (Heyman & Gelman, 2000a). This may mean
that many children readily use essentialist reasoning when no
opportunities to explore alternative explanations are made
available.
Discussion
In the present study we made use of the Spanish ser/estar
distinction to examine the relation between linguistic form and the
way children reason about the stability of psychological characteristics. In particular, the present study addressed whether children’s inferences about the stability of a characteristic are sensitive
to its being described with the ser, estar, and to be forms, whether
children’s beliefs about the stability of characteristics are related to
their use of ser and estar to describe behaviors, and how the
relationship between linguistic form and beliefs about stability
develops.
Effects of the Ser/Estar Distinction on Inferences About
Stability
The results showed that participants made use of the ser/estar
distinction in their reasoning about the stability of psychological
characteristics. When children heard psychological characteristics
described with the ser form, they expected the characteristics to be
relatively more stable. A cross-linguistic analysis indicated that in
the to be condition, children’s inferences about stability corresponded to those of the ser condition and differed from those of the
estar condition. In other words, children who heard psychological
characteristics described with the estar form were the least likely
to construe these characteristics in an essentialist way.
These results build on the results of prior research that examined
the ser/estar distinction, in which it was found that adults treat
adjectives that convey information such as shape and size as more
fundamental in defining a category when the ser form is used than
when the estar form is used (Sera, 1992). The present research
demonstrated a related pattern of results among children, in the
context of reasoning about people rather than objects.
The present findings can also be viewed in relation to other
research suggesting that language can shape children’s beliefs
about the extent to which human characteristics are stable and
fundamental. For example, there is evidence that the use of verbal
labels, such as describing a child as “a dawdler” rather than saying
that she “dawdles a lot,” conveys to children that the characteristic
in question is relatively stable (see Gelman & Heyman, 1999).
There is also evidence that when children are given global ability
praise, such as “You are so smart,” they are more likely to view
ability in essentialist ways (Kamins & Dweck, 1999; Mueller &
Dweck, 1998). More broadly, the present findings add to a body of
literature suggesting that language can affect reasoning about
people in various subtle ways (Brown & Fish, 1983; Fiedler,
Semin, & Bolten, 1989; Semin & Fiedler, 1988; see also Gelman
& Taylor, 2000, and Wylie, 1990).
In the present study, the linguistic distinction influenced children’s reasoning only at a local level. Specifically, we found that
when the ser/estar distinction was manipulated, inferences were
affected only with regard to the characteristic in question. As is
consistent with other findings, the effects of language on thought
often appear to be limited in scope (Sera et al., 1997; Shatz et al.,
2001).
Beliefs About Stability and Use of the Ser and Estar
Forms
Children who endorsed the belief that behaviors associated with
psychological characteristics are stable were especially likely to
use the ser form in their descriptions and attributions of behaviors
and outcomes. This pattern was seen in both the explanation
measure of the inference task and the story generation task. For
example, in the story generation task, children were asked to
explain behaviors that had been depicted in drawings and described verbally. Children with stronger beliefs in the stability of
psychological characteristics were more likely to explain the behavior using the ser form. To explain why Mario threw rocks at
dogs, some children said “porque él es malo” (“because he is
mean,” using the ser form), and to explain why Maria helped to
keep the park clean, some children said “porque ella es buena”
(“because she is good,” using the ser form).
These results provide support for the notion that children have
general beliefs about the stability of psychological characteristics
that they use to guide their interpretations of particular situations
(Heyman & Dweck, 1998). Specifically, the results are consistent
SER/ESTAR INFERENCES
with previous findings that children who tend to endorse a belief in
stable psychological characteristics are especially likely to draw
general inferences about people on the basis of limited information
about behaviors or outcomes. More broadly, these results support
arguments that children use schemas or theory-based conceptions
to draw inferences when they are faced with new information
(Barrett, Abdi, Murphy, & Gallagher, 1993; Greenhoot, 2000;
Heyman & Gelman, 1999; Liben & Signorella, 1993).
The present results are also consistent with findings that children’s essentialist beliefs can play an important role in certain
linguistic decisions, such as the extension of names (Diesendruck,
2001; Diesendruck et al., 1998). In these studies, preschoolers
were likely to accept a common name for two entities when the
entities were animals that were described as having the same
internal properties. This tendency was significantly weaker when
the entities were animals that were described as having the same
superficial properties or when the entities were objects that were
described as having the same internal, superficial, or functional
properties. Presumably, children inferred that if two animals have
common internal properties, they are probably the same kind of
animal and would share a common name.
This line of reasoning can help to account for a difference
between the present findings and those of Sera et al. (1997). As
noted previously, in their study of the appearance–reality distinction, Sera et al. found that the ser form seemed to be a better clue
to the real characteristics of an object than the to be form. This
contrasts with findings from the present study on the inference
measure, in which the ser form was as effective as the to be form
in leading children to infer that psychological characteristics are
stable. One possible explanation for this disparity between the two
studies is that children’s beliefs about the nature of the characteristics in question might have influenced their inferences. Specifically, children may believe that human psychological characteristics (see Bales & Sera, 1995) are relatively stable, and they may
have shown a bias to interpret the to be form so as to be consistent
with this belief. In contrast, children may have different beliefs
about other characteristics, such as the characteristics of objects,
that guide their interpretation of the to be form in those contexts.
This possibility is consistent with evidence that young children use
information about ontological kind to guide their inferences (Heyman & Gelman, 2000b; Imai & Gentner, 1997; Katz, Baker &
Macnamara, 1974; Mandler & McDonough, 1998; Soja, Carey, &
Spelke, 1991).
In general, these findings illustrate some ways in which children
exploit the semantic possibilities of their language to express their
beliefs as precisely as possible. The findings also have methodological implications in that they serve as a reminder that language
is a reliable measure of children’s beliefs only to the extent that it
is rich and flexible enough to allow the beliefs of interest to be
clearly expressed (see also Slobin, 1985).
Origins of Essentialist Reasoning in the Social Domain
As mentioned in the introduction, a number of researchers have
made arguments about why children might apply essentialist reasoning to the social domain. Hirschfeld (1996) argued that essentialist reasoning is part of the way children naturally think about
human kinds. In his view, this reasoning strategy derives from a
“human-kind-creating module” (p. 196). Atran (1990) offered an
415
alternative explanation. In his view, children transfer a reasoning
pattern that naturally develops in the domain of biology to the
social domain. Sperber (1996) offered yet another explanation. In
his view, essentialist reasoning is not naturally used in the social
domain, but certain types of cultural input concerning the social
domain can initialize essentialist reasoning.
Taken together, the present findings shed some light on these
different proposals. A number of our findings lend support to
Hirschfeld’s (1996) claims. First, there were no clear developmental changes in children’s essentialist reasoning. Particularly important from Hirschfeld’s perspective is that older children (8 –10year-olds) were no more likely to infer that psychological
characteristics are stable than were younger children (6 – 8-yearolds). Second, there was some evidence that children may have a
default essentialist bias in their reasoning about psychological
characteristics. Specifically, children tended to use the ser form
when describing characteristics, even to the point of misremembering an experimenter’s use of estar as ser. Moreover, when
drawing inferences based on psychological characteristics, children treated the English form to be as equivalent to the ser form
rather than the estar form. As noted above, the latter pattern is the
opposite of what Sera et al. (1997) found in children’s reasoning
about objects. Third, the only age-related effect we found was that
older children seemed to be more sensitive to the ser/estar distinction than younger children. In sum, it seems that children may
initially assume that psychological characteristics are relatively
essential, and the use of the estar form teaches them to override
this assumption.
The finding that language affects children’s essentialist reasoning about psychological characteristics is nonetheless consistent
with the other two views. In particular, Sperber (1996) suggested
that language may be one of the most powerful types of cultural
input for initializing essentialist reasoning. He noted that nominal
labeling can lead children to think more essentialistically about
certain categories (see, e.g., Gelman & Heyman, 1999).
Within the context of Atran’s (1990) “transfer” model, the
present findings reinforce the notion that language can be one of
the means by which the transfer occurs. That is, children may
transfer essentialist beliefs onto the social domain because they
notice that the way adults talk about the social domain is similar to
the way adults talk about the biological domain (e.g., if Spanish
speakers define both animal kinds and human kinds using the ser
form). Older children’s greater tendency to make use of the ser/
estar distinction when reasoning about psychological characteristics may be an indication that young children are still in the process
of transferring their knowledge about this distinction from animal
kinds to human kinds.
What seems to be somewhat inconsistent with Sperber’s (1996)
and Atran’s (1990) views, however, is the suggestive direction of
the language effects. As we have noted throughout, it seems that
rather than ser leading Spanish-speaking children toward an essentialist construal of the social domain, as predicated by Sperber’s
and Atran’s views, estar teaches Spanish-speaking children to
overcome such a construal. Within the context of Hirschfeld’s
(1996) model, the present findings suggest that language can play
a role in directing children toward the specific human kinds that
are not essentialized by a particular culture.
416
HEYMAN AND DIESENDRUCK
Unanswered Questions and Future Directions
As noted in the previous section, there is suggestive evidence
that children tend to show essentialist biases in their reasoning
about human psychological characteristics. However, this possibility is in need of further investigation. This is especially true in
light of results from the belief task, in which children did not
generally assume that behavior would be stable. It is likely that
children show greater essentialist tendencies when asked to reason
about psychological characteristics themselves instead of behaviors that are associated with psychological characteristics (see
Heyman & Gelman, 2000c, for similar arguments). It should also
be noted that young children do not always show clear patterns of
essentialist bias even when reasoning about psychological characteristics. For example, Heyman and Gelman (2000a) found that
kindergartners tended to assume an innate basis for physical characteristics such as ear shape but showed no clear pattern of
systematic beliefs about psychological characteristics. In part, the
issue depends on definition. Patterns of essentialist reasoning may
differ depending on the specific form of essentialist reasoning that
is investigated (e.g., innateness vs. stability). However, there is
likely to be variation even with the same general form. For
example, it would not be surprising if children exhibited more
essentialist tendencies when reasoning about short-term stability
than when reasoning about long-term stability. In short, further
research is needed to determine under what conditions children
may treat essentialist responses as a default.
A related issue concerns whether children change in their tendency to reason about psychological characteristics in essentialist
ways as they develop. No such evidence of developmental change
was seen in the present study. However, caution should be taken in
interpreting these results in light of the relatively small sample size
and the possibility that key developments in these beliefs may
occur at ages that were not assessed (see Bales & Sera, 1995,
concerning evidence that preschool children tend to become less
essentialist over time in their reasoning about human characteristics). Also, change over time may involve the development of
specific beliefs about specific traits. For example, Heyman and
Gelman (2000a) found that 10- and 11-year-olds and adults tended
to show different patterns of reasoning about the innateness of
different psychological characteristics (with intelligence seen as
relatively innate, as opposed to prosocial vs. antisocial tendencies),
a pattern that was not seen among younger children. Another
possibility is that the key developmental difference in children’s
beliefs about stability is not the extent to which beliefs in stability
are endorsed but the way children reason about change over time
(see Szkrybalo & Ruble, 1999, for a related argument that younger
children who make predictions consistent with gender constancy
tend to do so for reasons different from those of older children).
Another issue to be addressed in future research is the scope of
the implications of the ser/estar distinction. For instance, it is
possible that a child who tends to hear characteristics described
with the estar form over a long period of time will be more likely
to develop a general belief in the transitory nature of human
characteristics. It is also possible that children make use of the
ser/estar distinction when reasoning about unfamiliar characteristics. For example, a child might learn that someone “está ambicioso” and have no idea what “ambicioso” is but conclude that it
is some sort of characteristic that is not stable. In general, the idea
that linguistic forms influence the meaning of accompanying complements is compatible with long-standing arguments in the worldlearning literature about syntactic bootstrapping (see, e.g., Brown,
1957; Gleitman, 1990).
If it is the case that the ser/estar distinction can have some broad
effects on reasoning about human characteristics, it is possible that
Spanish-speaking children have more opportunities to learn about
the stability of psychological characteristics from their interactions
with others than do English-speaking children. Although English
speakers can convey the information that is conveyed by the ser
and estar forms by making explicit reference to stability (e.g., by
noting that someone is “a shy kind of person” or is “shy at the
moment”), the distinction is not obligatory in English, and it
cannot be made as easily as in Spanish. Even if hearing the ser and
estar forms does not broadly affect Spanish-speaking children’s
beliefs about the stability of human characteristics, it is possible
that their reasoning is affected by production demands. For example, Spanish-speaking children may give more thought to questions
of the stability of characteristics because they are generally required by their language to convey this information in their descriptions (see Slobin, 1985, for similar arguments).
In short, the present research provides evidence of bidirectional
effects between language and thought in children’s reasoning
about the stability of human characteristics. It points to important
questions about the role of language and belief systems in the
development of person perception.
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Received February 1, 2001
Revision received November 30, 2001
Accepted November 30, 2001 䡲